Lee Hsien Loong Quotes

The old model for India was to be self-sufficient. It was the ideal India became independent with, that you spin your own thread, make your own clothes.

- Lee Hsien Loong

America is a great nation, not just because of your power and your wealth, but because of your high ideals, openness, and generosity of spirit.

- Lee Hsien Loong

I do not owe hundreds of millions of potential foreign workers from around the world an obligation. I owe Singaporeans a responsibility.

- Lee Hsien Loong

I don't have farmers I can convert into factory workers.

- Lee Hsien Loong

It has to be good to live in Singapore because otherwise, nobody will stand for it.

- Lee Hsien Loong

What we can do in Singapore may not be doable elsewhere. Some things you know you need: you want efficient government, you want clean government, you want to do away with corruption, you must educate your people. You want to get housing and so on. All these are not such secrets, not so special to Singapore.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We stand stoutly against all forms of terrorism, and cross-border terror is a particular problem that India has. Singapore has a problem with cross-border terror, too, because we are a very small country, and it is quite possible for an attack to be mounted on Singapore from beyond our shores.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We know India is very focussed on black money; it is a very high-focus subject and we have been very careful to make sure the investments into India are legitimate. There is no 'round-tripping' or hot money or bad money being funnelled through Singapore.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Singapore needs to be able to continue to add value to China in order for the relationship to be worthwhile for both sides.

- Lee Hsien Loong

I think if you look at the Singapore projects, we wanted to do industrial parks. They have taken very long to clear the issues of land, and these become politicised, and you can't settle it, and eventually the project languishes and nothing happens.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Singapore admires America's dynamism, vibrancy, and capacity for self-renewal. These qualities attract the best and brightest from around the world.

- Lee Hsien Loong

You have to understand that Singapore is quite different from Mauritius.

- Lee Hsien Loong

If you don't have that Singapore core, you can top up the numbers, but you are no longer Singapore. It doesn't feel Singapore - it isn't Singapore - and we can issue everybody red passports, but where is the continuity?

- Lee Hsien Loong

Countries in Asia - Singapore, certainly, but many other countries too - are good friends to both China and America, and we would like to be good friends with both.

- Lee Hsien Loong

China's influence is growing; it is natural that they want to integrate more, do more business with countries around them, and the Belt and Road is a constructive way in which they can do so.

- Lee Hsien Loong

The tactics we were able to use in the 1960s, 1970s - let's have a campaign, mobilize everybody and, therefore, social pressure - stop littering, or stop spitting, or be courteous to one another: I am not sure that kind of approach will work anymore.

- Lee Hsien Loong

If you make a defamatory allegation that the Prime Minister is guilty of criminal misappropriation of pension funds of Singaporeans, that's a very serious matter.

- Lee Hsien Loong

You look at the Americans. They don't lack fervour in moral causes. They promote democracy, freedom of speech, women's rights, gay rights, sometimes even transgender rights. But you don't see them applying that universally across the world with all their allies.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We have long depended on an America which has got a clear sense of its stakes in the world and how much it depends on the world as well as how much the world and its allies and friends depend on the United States of America, and we hope this will continue.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Chinese companies - telecommunications and technology companies - are some of the best internationally. Taobao, WeChat, Huawei - not only are they large companies, but they're also very technologically advanced.

- Lee Hsien Loong

For trade to grow, India must make a strategic decision that you want to encourage interdependence and more openness and more trade-based economy.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We have to work towards free trade because otherwise we will miss out on many opportunities for cooperation, and relations amongst countries will become much more difficult.

- Lee Hsien Loong

No government prospers by saying, 'I don't need to do anything. Just by being there, we have made the country thrive.'

- Lee Hsien Loong

You have to have an idea of what you need to do, what needs to be fixed, what can be improved, what we should now imagine together which we didn't previously imagine. And having thought of it, decide to go it. And that's the government's role.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We are open to the world; the world is at our doorstep. It washes in, not just through the windows, but we are immersed in it completely - through the Internet, through the media, through people traveling, coming here, as well as Singaporeans going abroad.

- Lee Hsien Loong

The key thing in Northeast Asia is North Korea. They are unpredictable; they are developing their nuclear capabilities and their missiles.

- Lee Hsien Loong

In our society, which is multiracial and multi-religious, giving offence to another religious or ethnic group, race, language, or religion is always a very serious matter.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Overall, we think religion is a good thing. I mean, if we were godless society, we would have many other problems; the communists found that out.

- Lee Hsien Loong

If there are tensions between America and China, we will be asked to pick a side. It may not be directly, but you will get the message that, 'We would like you to be with us, and are you with us? If not, does that mean you're against us?' And that's to put it gently.

- Lee Hsien Loong

I think we are paying a lot of attention to China one way or the other. They are a big factor in the world. They are successful; they are growing. They want to grow their influence, and all the countries in Asia want to be their friend and want to benefit from China's development and success.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Whichever country we are talking to, we are concerned with economic cooperation, how to deepen our mutual dependence, how to find new areas of win-win.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We want the U.S. to have constructive and stable relations with China. That makes it much easier for us. Then we don't have to choose sides.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Singaporeans generally feel more secure these days. One of our tasks is to remind them that this, a result of a continuing act of will and an appropriate sense of insecurity, is very helpful.

- Lee Hsien Loong

The emerging economies, many of them are concerned. They didn't want the money to slosh in. They are afraid when the money sloshes out, but the tapering has to take place, and we have to be able to manage it.

- Lee Hsien Loong

There will always be frictions when you have a foreign worker population or immigrant population in the country, and we have to manage that, and that requires good behaviour and adjustment both on the part of the foreign workers and the immigrants as well as on the part of the Singaporeans.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We do have to watch to see how the foreign workers and immigrants are fitting in with our community, and you have to watch them mix so that you don't overbalance the numbers or the tone of our society.

- Lee Hsien Loong

I would not say that the North Koreans will do anything that the Chinese want them to do.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Every time you make a rule, somebody will think of a way to operate around the rule.

- Lee Hsien Loong

You have an administration which understands America's international responsibilities and interests, but you have a population which is anxious, tired, and doesn't want to bear any burden and pay any price. And that's very difficult for whoever becomes president.

- Lee Hsien Loong

My colleagues went on the Internet, went on Facebook, and they found it helpful, and they persuaded me that I should try, so I did. It's quite fun provided you keep it in balance and... from time to time slip in a serious message.

- Lee Hsien Loong

I hope to develop our relationship with the Trump administration and with the United States. It's a very sound relationship that's based on the basic strategic congruence of views about the world, about the region.

- Lee Hsien Loong

The U.S. is not a claimant state in the South China Sea or in the China-Japan dispute over the Senkaku Islands. But, of course, the 7th Fleet has been a presence in the region since the Second World War, and it is the most powerful fleet in the region.

- Lee Hsien Loong

One of the reasons America is welcome in Asia is because with America... there is a certain idealism and a certain bigness of soul. You want the region to prosper; you want countries to do well, and you are prepared to help them.

- Lee Hsien Loong

China has been developing, growing in economic strength and its influence in the region. That will continue.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We are happy to see China prospering; we are happy to see China playing a constructive and positive role in the region.

- Lee Hsien Loong

If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We are looking for ways where you can have a sandbox, where you have a restricted environment within which people can try new things, and I can try new rules. And depending on what works, then I open up the sandbox, and it becomes the new rule for the whole system.

- Lee Hsien Loong

The world is a diverse place. Nobody has a monopoly on virtue or wisdom.

- Lee Hsien Loong

To represent the nation, you must have multiracial representation.

- Lee Hsien Loong

If you interview world leaders, everybody will say they are for free trade. But what they mean by it and what they do when they say they are pro free trade, you have to watch and see.

- Lee Hsien Loong

With Singaporeans, you speak English, you're well-educated, the doors open everywhere.

- Lee Hsien Loong

No country can be an island unto itself or world unto itself. Not even the biggest country.

- Lee Hsien Loong

America excels not just through sheer individual talent but by working together with others.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Over half a century working together on multiple issues, Singaporeans and Americans have made many enduring and close personal friendships.

- Lee Hsien Loong

The natural result of people preferring one of their own race is that a minority race president will find it hard to get elected, and so it's something we should do something about and which we can do something about.

- Lee Hsien Loong

There can only be one government, and the president has certain roles and duties, which are to hold the second key on money and on people but not to go and check the government or tell the government what it is supposed to do.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Just as our forefathers saved and invested to build what we, the current generation, are enjoying today, so, too, we must plant trees so that our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, can enjoy the shade.

- Lee Hsien Loong

I think every administration has a settling-in process. And there's always an adjustment between what you can say during a campaign and what you find are the possibilities and the imperatives when you win the election and you enter the Oval Office.

- Lee Hsien Loong

It is never helpful to point at sticking points, but it is always helpful to encourage one's partners to take a more active and forward-looking approach.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Basically, if you become president, you must swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and what the Constitution says.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Everybody has his place; everybody is equal. Treated equally, equal standing, equal rights and status.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We are all in favor of the U.S. taking an active and constructive interest in Asia.

- Lee Hsien Loong

It takes time, but I have a promising team of younger Ministers, and I am quite sure from amongst them, one leader will emerge.

- Lee Hsien Loong

You need people who have their own views, whose views you respect, whom you can have a productive disagreement with, and work out ideas which you might not have come up with, or who improve on ideas you had.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Nowadays, however strong an economy is, not all roads will lead only there. There will be other links between countries in Asia, with America, with Europe, and China will fit into this global network.

- Lee Hsien Loong

We are not in a situation where the minorities are demanding something and the majorities are pushing back saying 'We don't want it.'

- Lee Hsien Loong

Maybe Americans feel they don't need the rest of the world anymore, and they wish it would go away. We don't have that option.

- Lee Hsien Loong

China is a very big and complicated country; it's not easy to govern. But with courage and unity, China will certainly overcome all difficulties and continue to develop and move forward.

- Lee Hsien Loong

The Chinese are quite clear what their interests are and very consistent on pushing their interests.

- Lee Hsien Loong

If you go overseas and meet people, you can detect a Singaporean from across the street - the way he dresses, slightly; the way he talks; the way he acts. There is a persona which is recognizable and which we are proud of.

- Lee Hsien Loong

You have to have a sense of what it looks like, not from the point of view of the policymaker but from the point of view of those who are at the receiving end of your policies.

- Lee Hsien Loong

The Chinese go around with lollipops in their pockets. They have aid. They have friendship deals. They build you a Prime Minister's office or President's office or Parliament House or Foreign Ministry. For them, trade is an extension of their foreign policy.

- Lee Hsien Loong

You need to have good people: honourable, capable, committed in politics, standing in public office. It's not a guarantee, but it's the ideal we have to aim for.

- Lee Hsien Loong

Criticism, any amount, we welcome it. Come, let's have a discussion - in Parliament, all the better.

- Lee Hsien Loong

If we have no foreign workers, our economy suffers; our own lives suffer.

- Lee Hsien Loong

There is always competition for influence, but there are also opportunities for cooperation.

- Lee Hsien Loong

My infrastructure must run brilliantly. My whole system must be different from what you can get anywhere else in Asia.

- Lee Hsien Loong

It's never easy to be a small country next to a big neighbor.

- Lee Hsien Loong

In every American election, crazy things are said. Positions are taken which the winners try very hard to forget afterwards.

- Lee Hsien Loong

I hope that soon after the next election, amongst them they will have decided, settled, and the leader will be ready to take over from me.

- Lee Hsien Loong

If you look at the young people today, they are passionate about all kinds of courses. We have dog-lovers, nature-lovers, those who are pursuing arts; we have quite many who are involved in religious activities through their church.

- Lee Hsien Loong

If you asked a Singaporean, on the one hand they'll say, 'Let us do our own things.' On the other hand, when an issue comes out, they'll ask, 'What is the government doing about it?'

- Lee Hsien Loong

When people say they don't want a nanny state, they are, in fact, in a conflicted state of mind. On the one hand, they want to do whatever they want and not be stopped. On the other hand, if something goes wrong, they want to be rescued.

- Lee Hsien Loong

At some point, there will be some other financial crisis. It's in the nature of a capitalist system.

- Lee Hsien Loong

You will always have politics being pushed towards multiracial politics because you have to field a team.

- Lee Hsien Loong

China is developing very quickly. At every stage, its needs are different.

- Lee Hsien Loong